Showing posts with label asians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label asians. Show all posts
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Asian Lady Skills
My mom is visiting. Today we went to dimsum and she passed on the ancient secret of how to shell a shrimp in your mouth. It took quite a few tries, some wasted meat, lots of swallowed shells, and one shrimp bit in my lap before I did it properly (and then still she said I obviously didn't chew the head properly to get all the juice out since the eyes were still intact). Conclusion: not really worth all the effort. But, as she also pointed out, this valuable skill could save me from having to use dirty swine-flu infected fingers to shell my shrimp. Oh joy!
Sunday, October 7, 2007
"Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" : A Review
Last night I had the chance to watch a one-woman show about suicide for asian american females. Before the show started I had been expecting some sort of adaption of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," however I have never read the book or watched the movie so I really didn't know what to expect.
The show begins with a Mr. Rogersque opening. Wong walks around the stage in a green cardigan and puts on a pair of shoes, and then begins to talk to the audience. Wong begins a 1-hour monologue with an occasional interlude for some audience participation / heckling to talk about her personal life, her past, and her own dealings with suicide. Half the time the show is a comedy routine with Wong poking fun at race and dropping one liners for laughs. The other half of the show is about why asian american females are killing themselves, and why its impossible we the audience should expect to find an answer by the end of her one hour show.
One of her most poignant anecdotes comes about 3/4 into the show when she begins to point out how few examples there are of asian american women who have survived suicide. On one end of the spectrum she points to celebrities who never had to deal with suicide, and then she begins to detail asian american women who have dealt with severe trauma in one form or another and survived: they are all porn stars. She briefly details the lives of Asia Carrera and Annabelle Chong. The former a piano prodigy who ran away from home to escape abusive parents and would sleep with strangers just to survive. The latter a gang rape survivor who would later pioneer on screen triple penetration and who was cheated out of money she should have been paid for performing one of the first one-day ultra gang bang marathons where she had sex with over 300 men. Wong's dramatic conclusion is that you have no choice but tol be perfect, turn into a porn star, or not live.
At one point in the show she begins to delve into cases of asian american suicide. A profile will flash up on the screen, giving such details as location and reasons associated with the suicide as she begins to monologue what might have been their last thoughts. The second case is about a girl named liz from cambridge, ma who is suffering depression and anxiety from grades and sets herself on fire. To me this is immediately recognizable as Elizabeth Shin from MIT, a girl who committed suicide the summer before I arrived for my freshmen year. After the first 4 cases the profiles on the screen begin to flash by as she races to even just provide names for them. By the end, the case numbers have reached past the tens of thousands. I am not sure most people realized that those were in fact real cases she was detailing.
The most interesting part of the evening came after the show was over. I was talking with four
asian american females who had seen the show, and not a single one had much to say! In contrast, after I had seen the latest harry potter movie every asian american female was up in arms at the way Harry had treated Cho Chang in the movie.
You can find out more about Kristina Wong here:
http://www.kristinawong.com/
http://www.bigbadchinesemama.com/
The show begins with a Mr. Rogersque opening. Wong walks around the stage in a green cardigan and puts on a pair of shoes, and then begins to talk to the audience. Wong begins a 1-hour monologue with an occasional interlude for some audience participation / heckling to talk about her personal life, her past, and her own dealings with suicide. Half the time the show is a comedy routine with Wong poking fun at race and dropping one liners for laughs. The other half of the show is about why asian american females are killing themselves, and why its impossible we the audience should expect to find an answer by the end of her one hour show.
One of her most poignant anecdotes comes about 3/4 into the show when she begins to point out how few examples there are of asian american women who have survived suicide. On one end of the spectrum she points to celebrities who never had to deal with suicide, and then she begins to detail asian american women who have dealt with severe trauma in one form or another and survived: they are all porn stars. She briefly details the lives of Asia Carrera and Annabelle Chong. The former a piano prodigy who ran away from home to escape abusive parents and would sleep with strangers just to survive. The latter a gang rape survivor who would later pioneer on screen triple penetration and who was cheated out of money she should have been paid for performing one of the first one-day ultra gang bang marathons where she had sex with over 300 men. Wong's dramatic conclusion is that you have no choice but tol be perfect, turn into a porn star, or not live.
At one point in the show she begins to delve into cases of asian american suicide. A profile will flash up on the screen, giving such details as location and reasons associated with the suicide as she begins to monologue what might have been their last thoughts. The second case is about a girl named liz from cambridge, ma who is suffering depression and anxiety from grades and sets herself on fire. To me this is immediately recognizable as Elizabeth Shin from MIT, a girl who committed suicide the summer before I arrived for my freshmen year. After the first 4 cases the profiles on the screen begin to flash by as she races to even just provide names for them. By the end, the case numbers have reached past the tens of thousands. I am not sure most people realized that those were in fact real cases she was detailing.
The most interesting part of the evening came after the show was over. I was talking with four
asian american females who had seen the show, and not a single one had much to say! In contrast, after I had seen the latest harry potter movie every asian american female was up in arms at the way Harry had treated Cho Chang in the movie.
You can find out more about Kristina Wong here:
http://www.kristinawong.com/
http://www.bigbadchinesemama.com/
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